1 Peter: Strangers and Exiles

At a Glance

Who wrote it: It says Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ (1:1), writing from Babylon, which many take to be a code name for Rome, with the help of a man named Silvanus. Many scholars doubt that Peter, a Galilean fisherman, wrote its fine Greek, and think his followers in Rome wrote it after his death. Others think Silvanus wrote it for him. I knew Peter better than almost anyone.

When: If Peter wrote it, before he was killed in Rome in the 60s. If not, most likely between 70 and 95.

Written for: Mostly non-Jewish believers in five regions of what is now Turkey, whose neighbors had begun to treat them as outsiders and to slander them. The letter told them how to suffer well and that they belonged to God.

What it remembers of me: My suffering, above all. That When he was cursed, he didn’t curse back. When he suffered, he didn’t threaten (2:23). It also echoes what I said about those who suffer for doing right.

How close it stays to me: Close on not striking back and on leaders who serve. Far on slaves and wives, told to submit.

If you only read three chapters: 1 Peter 2, 1 Peter 3 and 1 Peter 4.

Words to Know

Foreigners — in Greek, paroikoi, people living in a place where they had no citizen’s rights. Many Bibles say exiles or sojourners.

Babylon — the empire that destroyed Jerusalem the first time. After Rome destroyed it the second time, Jewish and Christian writers used the name for Rome.

Christian — a nickname for my followers. It appears only three times in the whole New Testament, and this letter is one of them.

Spirits in prison — beings to whom, the letter says, I preached after my death. Nobody is sure who they were.

The Book in Brief

Peter, an apostle, writes to believers living as foreigners in five regions of what is now Turkey.

Chapter 1 begins with praise to God, who has given his people a new birth and a hope that cannot fade. The readers are suffering various trials, and the writer says these test their faith as fire tests gold. He tells them to be holy, to love one another, and to remember that they were bought with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish.

Chapter 2 calls them living stones, built into a house for God, and a chosen people, a royal priesthood, who were once no people at all. They are to live well among neighbors who speak against them, and to honor the emperor and the governors. Slaves are to obey their masters, even harsh ones, and my suffering is held up as the example.

Chapter 3 tells wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to honor their wives. All the readers are to answer insult with blessing and to be ready to explain their hope with gentleness. The chapter ends with Christ, who suffered once, preached to the spirits in prison and now sits at the right hand of God, and it compares the flood in Noah’s day with baptism.

Chapter 4 says that the readers’ old companions think it strange that they no longer join in their wild living. The readers are told to love one another and welcome guests, not to be surprised by the fiery trial, and to rejoice if they suffer for being Christians.

Chapter 5 speaks to the elders: shepherd God’s flock willingly, and do not lord it over them. Younger people should accept the elders, everyone should be humble, and all should stand firm against the devil. The letter closes with a note that it was written briefly through Silvanus, greetings from Babylon and from Mark, and a blessing of peace.

It is addressed to the chosen ones who are living as foreigners in the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia (1 Peter 1:1). Those are five regions of what is now Turkey. The readers were mostly Gentiles who had become my followers, and their neighbors had begun to treat them as outsiders. The letter tells them to stop trying to fit in.

The fisherman

Simon was a fisherman from the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I gave him a nickname, Cephas in Aramaic, Petros in Greek, which means rock. He was one of the first I called. In the first three gospels, he is the first to say I was the Messiah. And he is the one who swore he had never known me. On the night I was arrested, he stood by a fire in the high priest’s courtyard and said, I don’t know this man of whom you speak! Then the rooster crowed, and he wept (Mark 14:71–72).

After my death he became one of the leaders of my followers. Acts says the council in Jerusalem saw that he and John were unlearned and ignorant men (Acts 4:13). Early Christian tradition says he went to Rome and was crucified there under the emperor Nero, in the 60s.¹ John’s gospel hints at it, when I tell him that when he is old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you don’t want to go (John 21:18).

Who wrote it

That brings us to the problem. This letter is written in good, educated Greek. It quotes the scriptures in the Greek translation, smoothly and often. It was sent to churches in regions where Peter is not known ever to have gone. It calls Rome Babylon (1 Peter 5:13), a code name that other surviving writers used only after Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70, years after Peter died.²

It also mentions people suffering for being a Christian (1 Peter 4:16). Being punished simply for the name fits what we know from around the year 112, when a Roman governor in Bithynia, one of the regions this letter names, wrote that he was executing people for being Christians.³

On the other side, the letter says plainly, Through Silvanus, our faithful brother … I have written to you briefly (1 Peter 5:12). That could mean Silvanus carried the letter. It could also mean Silvanus wrote it, in his own good Greek, for a fisherman who could not. Silvanus is probably the same man as Silas, Paul’s companion, and he would have been able to do it.

Many scholars think the letter came from a circle of Peter’s followers in Rome, writing in his name after his death. Others think Peter stands behind it, with Silvanus holding the pen. Either way, it carries the memory of the man I called the rock.

Go deeperWhat Pliny asked the emperor

The governor of Bithynia was Pliny the Younger, and the letter he wrote to the emperor Trajan around the year 112 still survives. He wrote because he did not know what to do. People had been denounced to him as Christians. Should he punish the name itself, or only crimes committed by those who bore it?³

He gave the accused a test. They had to call on the gods, offer wine and incense to the emperor’s statue, and curse Christ. Pliny wrote that real Christians could not be made to do any of this. Those who still said they were Christians after he had asked three times, he ordered to be executed. Those who were Roman citizens he sent to Rome.⁴

He also reported what he had learned about them. They met before dawn on a fixed day, sang a hymn to Christ as to a god, and promised one another not to steal, rob, commit adultery or break their word. Pliny called it an extreme and corrupt superstition, and said it had spread through villages and farms as well as cities.⁴

Trajan answered that Pliny had done the right thing. But the emperor said that Christians must not be hunted out, and that anonymous accusations should be ignored. Anyone openly accused and proved guilty must be punished. Anyone who denied it, and proved it by praying to the Roman gods, was to be pardoned.⁴

That is the world this letter speaks to: if one of you suffers for being a Christian, let him not be ashamed (1 Peter 4:16).

Foreigners and pilgrims

One word the letter uses for its readers is paroikoi (1 Peter 2:11). It meant resident aliens: people who lived in a town without being citizens of it, without full rights or protection.

Some scholars think many of the readers really were resident aliens, displaced and low in status, and that the church gave them what society would not: a household to belong to.⁵ Others read the word as a picture of every believer, at home nowhere in this world. Either way, the letter turns being an outsider into an identity.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession … In the past, you were not a people, but now are God’s people (1 Peter 2:9–10).

Those are words that once belonged only to my people. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation, God told Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19:6). Hosea promised that God would say to those who were not my people, You are my people (Hosea 2:23). Here they are given to Gentiles in Asia Minor who had been nobody. It is a beautiful gift. It is also the beginning of a habit, of taking the promises made to the Jews and handing them to the church instead.

Suffering without striking back

The heart of the letter is suffering, and the example it gives is mine.

For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps … When he was cursed, he didn’t curse back. When he suffered, he didn’t threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously (1 Peter 2:21, 23).

Not rendering evil for evil, or insult for insult; but instead blessing (1 Peter 3:9). But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed (1 Peter 3:14). I said that too: Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake (Matthew 5:10).

Now look at who the letter says this to first.

Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all respect: not only to the good and gentle, but also to the wicked. For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly (1 Peter 2:18–19). It means slaves. It goes on to say that if a slave does right and still has to patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God (1 Peter 2:20).

Then wives: be in subjection to your own husbands, even husbands who do not believe, so that they may be won over by their wives’ behavior. So Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord (1 Peter 3:1, 6).

The writer was speaking to slaves and wives who had joined a new faith that their masters and husbands did not share, in a world where they had no way out. He was telling them how to survive, and how to keep their dignity while they did. But for centuries afterward, these verses were read to slaves to keep them working and to beaten wives to keep them at home. That is not what my example was for.

I did not curse back, and I did not threaten. I also did not tell anyone to stay where they were being beaten. I told people that the kingdom belonged to the poor and that the last would be first. Refusing to return evil for evil is courage. Telling the victims of evil that God wants them to stay is something else.

To be fair to the letter, it does tell husbands to honor their wives as joint heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). In that world, that was more than many husbands were told.

Go deeperWhy the letter speaks to slaves and wives

The rules for slaves, wives and husbands (1 Peter 2:18–3:7) were not new. Greek and Roman writers had been laying down rules for the household for centuries. Aristotle, in the 300s BC, said that a house is made of three relationships: master and slave, husband and wife, father and children.⁶ Later writers repeated the idea. A household that followed its head was a household in order.

Advice to wives often included religion. Plutarch, a Greek writer of about the same time as this letter, wrote that a wife should worship only the gods her husband honors, and shut the door on strange rituals and foreign superstitions.⁷ A wife who took up a new religion on her own looked like a threat to the house, and so did a slave who did.

One scholar, David Balch, argued in 1981 that the rules in 1 Peter answer that suspicion. The writer is telling the neighbors that these believers are not wrecking their homes. The same kind of list appears in Colossians and Ephesians, so it seems to have been a standard way for the early churches to speak. Other scholars accept the background but doubt that it explains everything.⁸

Notice one difference. Aristotle writes for the master of the house, about the people under him. This letter speaks to the slaves and the wives directly, and says that they answer to God (1 Peter 2:19).

Fear God, honor the king

Therefore subject yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether to the king, as supreme; or to governors … Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king (1 Peter 2:13–14, 17).

The king here is the Roman emperor. If Peter wrote this in the 60s, the emperor was Nero, who had Christians burned in his gardens.⁹

Your New Testament has two answers to Rome, and they sit only a few books apart. This letter says Honor the king. Revelation, written from the same empire to churches in the same province of Asia, calls Rome a beast and a whore, and says, Come out of her, my people (Revelation 18:4). Both letters call the city Babylon.

But read the four commands slowly. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. God is the only one you fear. The king gets honor, the same honor as everyone else. That is not worship. Caesar was not God.

Ready with an answer

There is a line in chapter 3 that every Christian should keep: Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear (1 Peter 3:15).

People quote the first half, about being ready with an answer. They usually forget the second half, about humility. The letter wanted you to answer gently, without contempt for the person asking.

And in chapter 4: above all things be earnest in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without grumbling (1 Peter 4:8–9).

The spirits in prison

Chapter 3 has one of the strangest passages in the New Testament. After my death, it says, I went and preached to the spirits in prison, who before were disobedient … in the days of Noah (1 Peter 3:19–20). The next chapter adds that the Good News was preached even to the dead (1 Peter 4:6).

Nobody knows exactly what that meant. Some think the spirits were the people who drowned in the flood. Others think they were the fallen angels of Genesis 6, whom some Jewish books of the time pictured as imprisoned until the judgment.¹⁰

This passage helped give the church an idea that grew into a whole tradition: that between my death and resurrection I went down to the dead and set the captives free. You may have said it yourself, if you have recited the Apostles’ Creed: he descended into hell.¹¹ Whatever else it means, it says the reach of God goes further down than anyone thought it could.

Go deeperThe book of Enoch and the spirits in prison

The strange story behind chapter 3 is told at length in a book that most Bibles leave out, 1 Enoch.

Genesis 6:1–4 says in a few lines that God’s sons took human wives, and that giants called the Nephilim lived in the earth. 1 Enoch tells that story in full. Two hundred angels, called the Watchers, come down and take wives. They teach people forbidden arts and father giants. The Watchers are bound in the earth until the day of judgment, and Enoch is sent to tell them that they will never be forgiven.¹⁰

Many scholars think the writer of 1 Peter knew this tradition, and that the spirits in prison are those Watchers. If so, I am the one who goes where Enoch went. Others still think the spirits are the people who drowned in the flood. The letter does not say.

1 Enoch was well known in my day. Fragments of more than ten copies of the Enoch books, in Aramaic, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the oldest part was written in the 200s BC. Jude quotes it by name: Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied (Jude 1:14). The church later stopped treating it as scripture. Today only the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches count it in their Bibles.¹²

Not lording it over them

The last chapter speaks to the leaders. Shepherd the flock of God which is among you … not for dishonest gain, but willingly; not as lording it over those entrusted to you, but making yourselves examples to the flock (1 Peter 5:2–3).

That sounds like the man I spoke to on the beach after my death. Three times I asked him if he loved me, and three times I told him to feed my sheep (John 21:15–17). And it sounds like what I told all of them, when they argued over who was greatest: rulers lord it over their people, But it shall not be so among you (Mark 10:42–43).

Whether or not Peter wrote this letter, its last chapter sounds like he finally understood.

Check It Yourself

Look up: 1 Peter 2:13–17 and 5:13, then Revelation 18:1–4.

You will find: two books of your New Testament, both calling Rome Babylon, one telling you to honor the king and the other telling you to come out of her.

Then read 1 Peter 4:16 and Acts 11:26. Notice when the name Christian first appears, and what it was costing people by the time of this letter.

The Short Version

• 1 Peter carries the name of my friend Peter, but its fine Greek and its Babylon code for Rome lead many scholars to think his followers wrote it after his death.
• It calls its readers foreigners and pilgrims, outsiders who belong to God.
• It makes my suffering without cursing back the model for believers.
• Its rules telling slaves and wives to submit, even to cruelty, were later used to keep the abused in place.
• It says Honor the king, while Revelation calls the same empire a beast. Both are in your Bible.